Had too much time on my hand, since am down with Covid, and was interested in learning more about the Bonisagus Folios. There's no exact date on the first Folio, but the text in HoH:TL says that it started in the early ninth century.
As i said, I have time on my hand, so i used simple Excel to find the dates of the Rhine Tribunal years, to know what years it might have started. And yes, I accounted for Grand Tribunal dates. The first Rhine tribunal of the 9th century was in 801. I took some liberty to assume it might have been two Tribunals after it, so in 808 they formed the first committee, which published it's Folio in 815. That means that as of 1221, there have been 59 Folios published.
But this post isn't just about how many folios there are. Have you used the Folios in your game? what year Folio appeared? and what were it's contents?
I did use it. I had the covenant bid on the folio reception date as in the book. After roughly three tribunal period, the covenant from my first game has received only one. These were the stats for it:
Text detail
Arts & level
Notes
Coerce the Spirit of the Night
ReMe 20
Extra Duration Sun (Experiment)
Edge of the Razor
MuTe 20
Bonus applies to crafting tools (Experiment)
Lay to Rest the Haunting Spirit
PeMe 25
Requisite (Intellego), Steal one answer from the spirit's mind if vanquished
Enduring Flame
MuIg 10
Illuminates Underwater (Experiment)
Eyes of the Eagle
InIm 25
Halves Range Penalties (Experiment)
Feeding the Font of the Covenant
CrVi 50
First time this concept is published
Playing with Magic Auras
Magic Theory Tractatus Quality 5
Required to understand new Vim spell guidelines from RoP:M re: Auras
Thanks! I have a copy of it, and will be nice to add it to a game am in, but am looking for past Folios.
Folios that were published long ago, and have finally made their way to their Spring Covenant, or maybe old Folios found in the library of their Summer/Autumn/Winter Covenant.
In one saga, now in its third year real time, we introduce a folio roughly every seven years. The covenant was about fifty years old when the saga started (Elk's Run in Hibernia), and a few years after the PCs joined the covenant in 1217, the first, fifty-year old folio appeared. Oswald, with his keen interest in the library, had made a quite decent bid for their place in the queue in the early days of the covenant. They paid 3p vis to have it for three season, as pre-arranged half a century earlier, not enough to copy it in its entirety, as it happens.
A few years later they had the opportunity to bid for the Folio of 1221. They would have to pay 2p + 2p/season to have it within the first few years. They did not take any action, and stuck with old habit, and to be fair, they did not have the scribes to deal with more books at the time, anyway.
Furthermore, older folios started to appear, having completed their tour of the Order in about a century. The redcaps offer to deliver them for only one pawn for two seasons or two pawns for five.
After I designed the first few folios, the players now take turns designing them. We are not too worried about timing, here, since the books easily get delayed in transport. What is a a few years in medieval mail service?
These are the annals of the saga. It is a mess, but all the folios introduced are there, somewhere.
I am not too happy with their design. Most are too dull to live up to Bonisagus' ideals of invention and experiment. The first designs are also probably a bit over-powered. I hope to do better in the future.
Where most of the folios were back-hacked to show how magic had improved since Bonisagus's day. Breakthroughs that were important in the past but now are the default.
The last one posted was the only one created in play, and is over the 35 standard point buy.
My players seem to have caught the folio bug. I've been mostly using Bob's incredibly useful work, and introduced a copy of an old folio sat forgotten in a dusty corner of Cad Gadu when the players arrived to copy whatever they could get away with. From that start, they have just organised Stonehenge Tribunal to bid as a consortium for new folios and make copies of old ones they come across, all formally made known and available to any mage in the Tribunal.
